by Jesse Martin
For the next three days the wind picked up then died again, which meant I was still able to see the pointed volcanic island of Pico. That rubbed salt into the wound even more. My family had been waiting at the Azores for nearly two weeks while I was becalmed, then the meeting was so rushed and not how I'd imagined it would be. And there I was, staring at the island while they were back home again. The timing just didn't seem right, which was the most frustrating part of it all. I could have spent those last few days speaking to them from another boat rather than just drifting aimlessly on my own wasting time. It was so hard to take.
Monday, May 24
Wind increased until it was 15-20 knots. Did a bit of tidying up and listened to Bob Dylan. Nice sunny day. Saw some more dolphins. Received emails from mates via Barbara late last night. Had a coffee in the afternoon so I didn't get to sleep until 2 a.m.
I soon made it into the northeast trade winds, which were perfect as they came from behind and were always consistent, with sunshine most of the time.
Friday, May 28
I'm surely in the trade winds now. Beautiful conditions and easy sailing. The nights are great too. It's warm enough to sit outside in the cockpit wearing nothing with all the lights turned off and look up at the stars, which seem to be everywhere. The positions of the constellations are so familiar that I can tell when I am off-course with a glance to the sky, depending on what time of the night it is.
I started to spend many nights outside as the weather got warmer and the boat was moving well without water spraying over the cockpit. All my torches had broken, either from running them all night to light up the sails in case of nearby shipping or from saltwater. I still had heaps of D-sized batteries left so I bent some wire and used gaffer tape and a globe to make my own light, which I strapped on to the solar panel frame. It would light up the whole cockpit with a beautiful warm light like that from a candle. I'd sit out there at night with my guitar and something to nibble on and dodge the occasional rain cloud by jumping down into the cabin. It was a great time of the trip. I read books like Survive the Savage Sea and Fatu Hive: Back to Nature, which kept my imagination working about someday stopping off at all the interesting places I read about in these books. It was a time of great dreaming.
Monday, May 31
Position is 27°38'N, 26°21'W.
I've discovered a new hobby—picking the sultanas out of my cereal cos I don't like them! It has everything a good hobby consists of—a challenge, a reward and best of all, it passes the time.
Thursday, June 3
Flying fish reappeared all of a sudden two days ago. Last night had about twelve land on boat so I was up putting them back in the water. Have been moving along great the last two days. Should do approx. 150 miles today. Got good news from Mum this morning that the call costs from Iridium are dropping next month from $ 15 per minute to $4.45. Great! Worked out on the big chart that I need to average 5.5 knots (135 miles a day) to be back in time for my birthday. Will try for this but I doubt it will happen. Most probably ETA is mid-September.
In a couple of days I would have been out here for six months. That's HALF A YEAR. Doesn't seem that long. I really hope I can get home in three months like originally planned. Don't want to be out here for another half a year.
It wasn't that I disliked it out there. I was having a great time and living a very satisfying life. But I was missing the normal things of home. If I spoke to someone on the phone for ten minutes that was a huge amount of time to be talking to another person, and it made the rest of the day great, even if the conditions weren't so perfect. Yet, if I was at home I could call a mate up for 30 cents and speak for as long as we wanted. I looked forward to human interaction when I got home. I'd estimated my trip would take roughly nine months to complete.
I hadn't worked out the distance and how fast I'd be going, instead I just took how long it had taken David Dicks—264 days—and expected that I'd do the same.
It looked like I'd make it home about mid-September which left me about three weeks up my sleeve before I got home older than David Dicks. I had to be home by 6 October to claim the age record. While out at sea, the record hadn't weighed on my mind all that much. David got back at age eighteen years and 41 days and I turned that on 6 October. But David hadn't completed his voyage unassisted. The youngest person after David to complete a non-stop trip unassisted was a 26-year-old, so I had plenty of time to get home in time to break a record.
The record meant nothing to me when I was out at sea. So what if I got home with or without a record! It was nothing in the scheme of things. I was looking forward to the hugs and kisses and the human contact far more than a piece of paper that I could use to show people something I already knew myself. I'd have very happily traded a can of Coke for the record.
You might ask why I didn't. Why didn't I ask Mum to hand me more supplies or stop off and see the sights? There were two reasons. First, I had commitments back home to sponsors who had put a lot into my trip, and secondly, because I wanted to finish something I'd started. This was probably the main reason. If I pulled into land or succumbed to the temptation of accepting assistance when there was no need for it, then I'd have chosen not to succeed. From the very beginning my aim was to finish, and that was my choice. Either I couldn't because of circumstances out of my control or because I gave up. It was as straightforward as that, and I was simply giving it my best shot.
If, for whatever reason, I couldn't finish because things were out of my control, then it didn't matter that much. As long as I did the best I could, I was satisfied and that's what the trip was about—being satisfied with myself!
Wednesday, June 9
A bit of adrenalin pumping around the old veins at the moment. It's been a slow, calm, hot, sunny day and I've been in the cockpit reading. I stood up just a little while ago to take a leak overboard when I heard an unfamiliar noise. I looked out over the starboard quarter and there was this boat heading straight for me several miles away It was only a fishing boat but I was concerned cos this area is pirate territory How often does a boat in the middle of the ocean start heading straight for you?! I jumped down below and called out on the VHF while trying to get into some shorts at the same time. I got an answer, but they only spoke Spanish (I think) meaning it could still have been a pirate boat. I furled the genoa and changed course to see if they would follow but they were really close by now. Five crew stood on deck and started waving madly and taking photos . . . Phew!!! I waved back and whipped down below to get my camera while we both took photos of each other. Then they kept on going so I unfurled the genoa again.
I figured they must have either heard me reporting my position to Fred each night and knew what I was doing. Or else they were really homesick and were glad to see another boat, as we were hundreds of miles from the coast of Africa. I was also glad to see them after I realised they Were no threat to me.
Not long after that, I had another shipping encounter. I was tracking due south, with enough wind to keep me happy, but it had a nasty habit of dying every now and then.
I clearly remember the wind dying during the middle of one night so in my sleepy state I dropped the mainsail about a metre to take the bite out of it whipping and shuddering the whole rig. The sun was coming up as I got up to check things, however I decided as I was not moving I may as well go back to bed and have a sleep-in.
My slumber was shattered by three long loud honks which scared the living daylights out of me. I cleared the lee sheet holding me into the bunk and scrambled naked up the stairs, cleaning the sleep from my eyes and trying to focus on where the noise had come from.
About 100 metres away was a huge tanker heading in the same direction as I was, parallel to me. Seeing that there was no immediate danger, my mind jumped to the next priority, which was to cover myself from the sailors who were no doubt watching. I swung down below and got into some shorts before coming back up again and waving in the general direction of the ship. I couldn't see anyone but I su
spect they saw the limp sails from a distance and with no-one on deck on such a warm sunny morning, became concerned for my welfare and detoured to check it out. That's the law of the sea for you. It gave me a good feeling to know 200,000-tonne strangers were looking out for a small boat like Lionheart.
I was getting closer to the equator and Roger was trying to work out the best longitude for me to cross through the doldrums. He'd been keeping an eye on the weather patterns around the area to provide the best route to get me through the area as quickly as possible.
I expected to be stuck in the windless area for some time but hopefully the stories about yachts being stuck for weeks on end wouldn't happen to me. My first crossing, when heading up towards the Azores, had been pretty quick and I hoped this one would be similar. At least one consolation was that I knew I had less of the trip to go than I had already done, which would make any delay easier to handle.
The first signs of the doldrums soon appeared. As I neared the equator again, it became very humid and muggy, and the salt that penetrated all my clothing and bedding attracted moisture, making everything damp. Clothes were so uncomfortable, I went without most of the time, except when I was video-recording. Even then, there were a few times I forgot, catching myself on camera.
But the major problem was that the wind simply disappeared. Then came the huge rain clouds which dumped their loads with such intensity that the rain would envelop the boat like a thick fog. The wind blew up to 30 knots in those sporadic gales. As soon as the cloud passed, the gusting wind blew from all directions, changing constantly and chopping up the swell and rocking Lionheart all over the place. It made life very uncomfortable. It would be very grey and overcast during those rain clouds, yet half an hour later the sun would be out, beating down in full equatorial strength, highlighting the dark clouds surrounding me, with no wind at all.
The rain gave me a chance to replenish my fresh water supplies. I'd sit in the rain with a bucket in one hand and a sponge in the other. The rain would hit the rigging and sails and drip down to the deck, draining towards the cockpit where I sponged it into the bucket until it was full. I made a funnel from an empty milk carton, decanting the water from the bucket into a jerry can. I managed to fill one-and-a-half jerry cans in this way, which turned out to be a bit of a lifesaver by the end of the trip. Things would have been pretty desperate in those final few weeks without it.
Monday, June 14
Moving very slow. Went backwards today! My pos is 05°46′N, 25°12′W.
For five days I rocked and wallowed hopelessly in the doldrums. It was another waste of time, except for an unusual experience with a pod of dolphins.
The sun was out and there were a few small rainbows hanging about the ever-present rain clouds. There was no swell except for a few small waves created by the last downpour. I was lying in my bunk when I heard a noise through the fibreglass hull. I assumed it was the clicks and whistles of a pod of dolphins approaching the boat. I went outside, checking the piece of wool tied to the shrouds for any hint of wind. It was limp, with not a breath in the air. I looked over the side of Lionheart and saw more than a dozen dolphins swimming around the boat. I was intrigued, as they behaved like a human family. Every other time I'd seen dolphins on the trip (which was quite often), Lionheart was sailing along, with only the biggest of the pod swimming in the bow wave, surfacing for a breath every now and then. But this time the pod had come over to look at me even though I wasn't moving. I started talking to them, which sounds stupid, but it seemed the most normal thing to do out there.
‘Hey guys, do a flip for us, come on,’ I'd say, or I'd try to mimic their whistles, with poor results.
I could distinguish the older ones with their scratched torsos and pieces of fins missing, no doubt as a result of close encounters with sharks or other big fish. The younger dolphins were much smaller, with smoother torsos. They'd obviously not had their scrapes and fights, which were sure to come. The younger ones swam as a unit just behind their mothers and copied every turn and movement their guardians made.
Then there were the aggressive ones, who I assume were the chiefs of the pod. They would leap out of the water sideways and whack the water with their tails and hind, making a big splash, then 10 metres later, do the same thing five or six times over.
But by far my favourites were those I called the teenagers. They would gracefully get a run up under the water then leap clear of the surface while spinning like a torpedo four or five times, belly-flopping down into the water with a splash. It was so spectacular, happening only a few metres from the boat, like something you'd see at Sea World.
They reminded me of my mates and me, going to the pool on hot days on our skateboards to cool down and checking out the scenery. We'd energetically attempt flips and strange moves off the diving boards, often hurting ourselves, all in the name of impressing chicks.
The dolphins stayed with me for several hours, while I sat fascinated by their antics. But as it started to get dark, they left me again, to battle the frustration of the doldrums alone.
I crossed the equator again on 21 June, but the milestone went unnoticed. I was going to check the water draining down the sink, and didn't even realise I was back into the southern hemisphere until well after the event.
The rain clouds slowly disappeared as I drifted, then sailed slowly south when the breeze became more frequent. I'd made it through the doldrums in relatively good time and hit the southeast trade winds.
I'd only used the mainsail on its own over the last week, but with the more consistent wind the genoa was able to come into play. It got about a third of the way out when it wouldn't move any more. I went up the front and tried to untwist it myself, but the furler just wouldn't budge. I was able to reverse the sail, pulling it back in, but the furler made a terrible grinding noise. I went below and grabbed the magic WD40 lubricant spray. I sprayed the furler a few times and it started to move again, but still with some friction. I presumed some dried salt had settled inside the casing as it sat dormant during the past week. I continued to work the mechanism until the drum began spinning more smoothly.
I went back to the cockpit and started to pull the sail out again until it pretty much got to the same point as before and wouldn't move any more. Then I did something really stupid, something I'd been trying not to do the entire trip. I used force, thinking that was needed to turn the dried salt to powder. I gradually winched the sail all the way out. I was moving quite well so I set the boat to steer itself then went up forward to give the furler a couple more sprays.
It wasn't until well into the afternoon, when I had to furl in some of the genoa as the wind picked up, that I noticed the drum had come apart from its base. It was pulling upwards, providing less tension for the sail. My first thoughts were that this was a disaster.
I quickly tested the furler and discovered I was able to furl the sail in although, without the tension, it began to kink as it was wound around itself. I had no choice but to wind it in as I had to stop the boat to get a better look at the problem. The drum had separated and by sticking my fingers through the gap I found shards of what I assumed were ball bearings from the seal. Damn it! I lay on my back and looked up at the problem. I could see where the two parts of the bearing had come apart. There were only three steel ball bearings left. The rest had disintegrated, presumably when I forced it earlier on.
I didn't have any spare parts for the furler and was at a loss to what I could do. It was an integral piece of equipment, enabling me to quickly and effortlessly pull the sail in and out, and it was virtually broken. I could still turn it to furl the sail up, but instead of pivoting on the bearing, the forestay would rub on the inside of the tubing which would eventually wear it away, rendering it unusable.
It was the early hours of the morning back in Melbourne so I waited until later that night, when it was about 8 a.m. at home, and gave Dad a call. It had been a long time since I'd spoken to him, so he must have been a bit shocked at what I had to
report.
I explained the situation and asked him to contact the Australian distributors in Perth for a recommendation on what I could do. I said I'd call in four hours’ time to see what he had come up with. Meanwhile it was dark and I was plodding along under mainsail alone. I had trouble staying awake as I waited to call Dad. When I did he had some grim news. There was nothing I could do to fix the problem with the equipment I had on board, which left me with two options: I could continue using the furler, risking the chance of other breakages, then pull into South Africa for a spare part and forego the unassisted component of my trip. Or take the entire unit off and alter the genoa so I could raise and lower it the conventional manual way.
I didn't like the idea of sailing with a faulty piece of equipment and South Africa was still six weeks away. I decided to get rid of the thing altogether and keep it simple. I had a new challenge—getting the bastard off!
The wind started to lighten as I went to bed thinking about my big job the following day. By the morning there was only a slight breeze with small waves lapping the side of Lionheart, perfect conditions to get the job done. The sun was out and I was feeling positive and looking forward to the challenge. I started by altering the sail. As I had to take the genoa off the furler track, it was a good opportunity to use a new sail, so I got the spare genoa out of storage. This was a job in itself, unpacking and packing again then getting the big bundle up into the cockpit. This spare sail had been made for the furler and didn't have hanks attached, which held the sail to the forestay and allowed it to slide up and down. I had about five hanks in my sail repair kit, so I had to take some off the spare storm sail and no. 3 jib. I had enough to cover the length of the sail.
I started work on the new genoa. I counted how many hanks I had and measured the length of the sail, then worked out how far apart each one should go and marked the spots with a texta. Then I used some sticky-back sail cloth to reinforce the areas and sewed a lip of webbing where the hanks would go through. This took me several hours. The next step was to cut the holes at the designated intervals, then put the hanks in and bend them shut again without snapping the brass gates off totally. I was relieved to have finished that job, but I knew it was the easier of my tasks for the day. On to the hard part. How the hell was I going to get that furler off?